Mercutio jests with Romeo, musing that Mab, the bringer of dreams, has visited his lovesick friend:
O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes
In shape no bigger than an agate-stone (60)
On the fore-finger of an alderman,
Drawn with a team of little atomies
Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
Her wagon-spokes made of long spiders' legs,
The cover of the wings of grasshoppers, (65)
The traces of the smallest spider's web,
The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
Her wagoner a small grey-coated gnat,
Not so big as a round little worm (70)
Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut
Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
And in this state she gallops night by night... (1.4.58-100)
Shakespeare's reference to Queen Mab, the well-known fairy in Celtic (Irish) folklore famous centuries before Shakespeare, was the first known reference to her in English literature. After Shakespeare introduced Mab to English poets, she became much loved, inspiring other great authors. Please see Shakespeare Fairies for much more on Queen Mab and Act 1, Scene 4 of Romeo and Juliet for full explanatory notes.
Ben Jonson recounted the tale of Queen Mab during his performance before Anne of Denmark (the wife of James I) as she journeyed from Scotland to England in 1603 (his performance was later printed as Jonson's Entertainment at Althorpe). The following is an excerpt relating to Mab:
This is Mab, the mistris-Faerie,
That doth nightly rob the dayrie;
And she can hurt, or helpe the cherning,
(As shee please) without discerning...
In 1627, Michael Drayton wrote a fairy poem called Nimphidia. Nimphidia, an attendant on Queen Mab, tells the poet everything that happens at Mab's court:
And thou, Nymphidia, gentle fay,
Which meeting me upon the way
These secrets didst to me bewray,
Which I now am in telling;
My pretty light fantastic maid,
I here invoke thee to my aid,
That I may speak what thou hast said,
In numbers smoothly swelling.
This palace standeth in the air,
By necromancy placed there,
That it no tempests needs to fear,
Which way soe'er it blow it.
And somewhat southward toward the noon,
Whence lies a way up to the moon,
And thence the Fairy can as soon
Pass to the earth below it.
The walls of spiders' legs are made,
Well mortised and finely laid;
He was the master of his trade
It curiously builded;
The most famous work to feature Queen Mab is by the Romantic poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley. In 1813, Shelley wrote a poem in nine cantos called Queen Mab. Cantos I and II focus on Mab in her time-chariot:
'I am the Fairy Mab: to me 'tis given
The wonders of the human world to keep;
The secrets of the immeasurable past,
In the unfailing consciences of men,
Those stern, unflattering chroniclers, I find;
The future, from the causes which arise
In each event, I gather; not the sting
Which retributive memory implants
In the hard bosom of the selfish man,
Nor that ecstatic and exulting throb
Which virtue's votary feels when he sums up
The thoughts and actions of a well-spent day,
Are unforeseen, unregistered by me;
And it is yet permitted me to rend
The veil of mortal frailty, that the spirit,
Clothed in its changeless purity, may know
How soonest to accomplish the great end
For which it hath its being, and may taste
That peace which in the end all life will share.
This is the meed of virtue; happy Soul,
Ascend the car with me!' (Canto I 167-86)
